Runaway

Runaway (1984)


Runtime: 100 minutes


Directed by: Michael Crichton


Starring: Tom Selleck, Cynthia Rhodes, Gene Simmons, Kirstie Alley


From: Tri-Star


I picked this movie for a specific reason. I saw it more than once as a kid but the last viewing was so long ago, watching this today was the first time I ever saw it in widescreen. The reason why I watched it now was that the villain is Gene Simmons and well, via someone I know on Twitter, I discovered at pretty much the last minute that Ticketmaster was offering up FREE tickets to a concert last night at Orlando's Amway Center; that band was in town as today in the same building is the championship for the Arena Football League. That band... KISS.


Yes, even with Ticketmaster's notorious fees, it was only $4.80 to see a legendary band, albeit one that has only two original members in it and that's been the case for like the last 10 years now. Next year the Arena Football League will have a team named after KISS, as that band is way above and beyond any other name when it comes to licensing its name out to just about anything you can think of in order to make a buck. Anyhow, the concert was definitely a lot of fun and worth a lot more than what I paid to get in. So, I figured I should see a movie where the frontman for the band is the villain, and that's what I did.


The plot, via the IMDb: “In the near future, a police officer specializes in malfunctioning robots. When a robot turns out to have been programmed to kill, he begins to uncover a homicidal plot to create killer robots... and his son becomes a target.”


Overall, I say that this movie is fine; not great but not awful either. It's just a standard thing that you can watch on a rainy afternoon and not much more. It's inoffensive entertainment. It could have been more exciting or inventive with such a wacky idea and such things as giant magic bullets that can track a person from their heat signature. It is fun to be amused by what the 1980's thought the future was going to be like, with non-humanoid robots (which are all the robots you see here; no androids or anything of that sort) doing many tasks with and without humans... even being like a maid at someone's house. They hasn't happened quite yet. There's also a giant brick cellphone like how they used to be.


At least there are entertaining moments and you get to see a hero who suffers from vertigo, and that does come into play... not that you needed to be told of such a thing. There's also legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith doing his first-ever electronic score, which is as wacky as you'd expect from an 80's movie. There are also robotic spiders, which are unforgettable (literally; I did not forget them from my youth)



I'll be back Monday night.